Anesthesia and learning: the mind-body connection

Patient learning depends on the ability to process information during the perioperative experience. This article provides a brief review of cognition/anesthesia. It then presents findings of an exploratory study (N = 49) that looked at recognition recall, free recall, and psychomotor performance ability immediately preoperatively and 2 hours after surgery in patients having ambulatory surgery with general anesthesia. Findings showed a decrease in all three mental abilities from the preoperative to postoperative time, regardless of length of time of anesthesia administration, or number or kind of anesthetic agent.